Here’s a simple fact: if ObamaCare is fully implemented it will add more than $700 billion to the deficit in its first 10 years. That’s why – in a must-read post on National Review – former Congressional Budget Office (CBO) Director Douglas Holtz-Eakin says repealing the job-killing law “is simply a first step toward fiscal sanity that should happen as soon as possible.”
Posted by Don Seymour
Liberals claim otherwise and point to a CBO cost estimate to claim repealing the massive, costly entitlement would somehow increase the deficit. But as Holtz-Eakin told CNN, “by law, the [CBO] must take the information Congress sends to them — however implausible — at face value.” And the legislation Democratic leaders handed over to CBO forced them to:
- Ignore the at least $115 billion needed to implement the law;
- Double-count $521 billion in Social Security payroll taxes ($53 billion), CLASS Act premiums ($70 billion), and Medicare cuts ($398 billion);
- Ignore the costly ‘doc-fix’ provision that was included in an earlier analysis; and
- Count ten years of revenues to offset six years of new spending.
“There was never any reason to believe” that ObamaCare “reduced the deficit,” Holtz-Eakin writes. This chart from the House Budget Committee shows what happens when you take away the “wide range of budget gimmicks” CBO was forced to use in estimating the cost of ObamaCare:
This and more is explained in a report released today by the House Majority that examines the budget-busting, job-killing impact of ObamaCare. You can view the full report here. Page 15 of the report cites President Obama’s deficit commission, which found that health care spending projections under ObamaCare depend “on large phantom savings.” The commission goes so far as to recommend repealing the CLASS Act, one of the culprits for the rigged CBO score. In its final report, the commission recommends Congress pursue a “number of reforms to reduce federal health spending and slow the growth of health care costs more broadly,” goals ObamaCare was supposed to achieve.
Tomorrow, Republicans will begin keeping their Pledge to America and take what Speaker Boehner calls the “first steps to repeal the job killing health care law that was passed last year over the objections of the American people.” In a press conference today, Boehner said:
“With 10 percent unemployment and massive debt, the American people want us to focus on cutting spending and growing our economy, and that is what repealing the health care law is all about. I hope the House will act next week to repeal the job killing health care law so we can get started on replacing it with commonsense reforms that will reduce the cost of health insurance in America.”
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